Jac gave the background to how he’d handled things with Hadley, Saunders, Levereaux and Mack Elliott: putting them in the moment. ‘So, I’m going to ask you the same as them: do you remember where and when you first heard Jessica Roche had been murdered?’
But as quickly as that light had come into Larry Durrant’s eyes, it receded. ‘I don’t know. It’s difficult.’
‘I know.’ Jac smiled tightly. ‘But try. Try. It’s important.’
Larry nodded, applying more thought, his eyes darkening with concentration. ‘I’m not sure, but… but early evening news, I think.’
‘Early evening? Not daytime news or in a newspaper?’
Durrant shook his head. ‘No, don’t think so. I wasn’t working, but I was out in the daytime a lot… looking for work. So I think that’s the first time I’d have seen it.’
‘Think? Don’t you actually remember where and when you saw it, Larry?’ An edge now in Jac’s voice.
‘Don’t know.’ Durrant looked down again, that uncertainty, the shadows worming deeper. ‘That’s how I seem to remember it… evening news.’
‘Evening news. Okay. Okay. And what do you remember feeling when you saw that news?’
‘Feeling?’ Durrant shook his head, his tone incredulous. ‘I’m still working on where and when, and now you want me to tell you what I was feeling. And why’s that so important?’
‘Because, Larry, if you’d just killed Jessica Roche, you’d have been scouring the newspapers from first light, or at least made sure to catch a news bulletin a bit before early evening. That’s why. And when you did first hear that news, a stone would have sunk through your stomach.’
‘Oh, right.’ Durrant exhaled dramatically, forcing a tight smile. ‘Since you put it like that.’ He applied more thought for a moment, faint shadows drifting behind his eyes again; then, as if as an afterthought, ‘What did the others recall?’
‘I’ve still got a couple more leads to hear from,’ Jac lied. He didn’t want to tell Durrant that there was only one lead remaining, and that it was a scatterbrained waitress who hardly remembered your drink order minutes later; let alone what, where and when from twelve years ago.
Larry nodded, ‘Okay,’ blinking slowly as he sank back again into thought. But the shadows in his eyes just seemed to settle deeper, and after a moment he squinted and shook his head, as if he’d tried to read a distant number-plate on a dark night, but the car had driven off at the crucial moment. He smiled wryly. ‘You know, when I first lay on Truelle’s couch, I couldn’t even remember my son’s middle name or his birthday. My mother’s name had gone too, and what my father looked like and how old I was when he died… and everything about Francine’s mother — though at first Franny thought I was just doin’ that on purpose — all completely lost, out of reach.’ Larry’s lopsided smile quickly faded. ‘I’m grateful just to have been able to get that back, Jac — let alone remembering what I was feeling twelve years ago.’
‘I know. I know.’ Jac nodded sombrely. ‘But it’s just that you said you’d started to remember more.’
‘Yeah.’ Larry held one palm out in tame concession. ‘Like a bit of where and when and a couple of old buddies’ names. But I think that what I was actually feeling then is gonna be stretching things. Maybe always will be.’
‘Okay. Where and when.’ Jac grabbed for what he could. ‘Let’s concentrate on that. See if you can remember when that week’s pool game was in relation to you hearing about Jessica Roche’s murder. I mean, was it just the day after? Or did there seem to be more of a gap?’
‘I don’t know. Day after… day after?’ Larry’s eyes and thoughts drifting again. ‘Maybe something there… but…’
Jac sat forward, desperately afraid that whatever thin thread Durrant had grasped might be lost again. ‘Try, Larry, please…’
Durrant nodded, blinking slowly. ‘If only I could remember whether Bill Saunders was there that week. You see, if it was a Tuesday… I recall that often Bill wouldn’t show then, because he had to take his little girl to some sort of dance practice. So we’d get someone else from the bar to fill in. So that would then leave just that crucial Thursday night.’
Jac nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes. It would.’ The night Jessica Roche was murdered. He fell quickly silent again so as not to break Durrant’s concentration.
Larry was squinting at that distant number plate again; for a second it looked like he might have fixed on it, but then it was as if the tail-lights had in turn moved further away. He peered harder to try and compensate, but it was no good; it was lost again. Jac noticed Larry’s hands and arms trembling then, as though the effort of remembering had set off a gentle quake in his body.
Larry shook his head finally. ‘I’m sorry, Jac. Maybe led you on some there, too, with the “where and when”. I can’t remember whether Bill was there that week. Overall, I can recall only a handful of pool games, and maybe a handful of incidents too from those games. But ask me now which incidents were from which games, or which week or month — or even year — they were, I’d be lost. Never mind when one particular game was in relation to Jessica Roche’s murder.’
Jac nodded, closing his eyes for a second in acceptance, and could almost feel the shuddering in Durrant’s body pass through him. Seeing Durrant’s eyes dark and haunted, grappling for segments of his life that were out of reach and probably now would forever remain so, Jac felt like running down the corridor to Haveling or getting on the phone to Governor Candaret, screaming: You can’t kill him! Look at him. Look at him!
Jac took a fresh breath. ‘One other thing. On that tape you made for Truelle — do you recall anyone else being around, apart from that woman walking her dog as you ran away, but perhaps forgot to mention?’ Jac said ‘on the tape’ because, outside of that, he doubted Durrant would recall anything.
Durrant pondered for a second. ‘No. Why?’
‘No particular reason.’ Jac shrugged. I was there at the time. Although he’d told Durrant about the e-mails, he’d held back the sender’s claim of actually being there. One more thing Durrant would now never know. ‘Or perhaps even just the sense that someone else was there, either in the house or outside, looking on, that you didn’t mention to Truelle?’
‘No.’ Larry’s eyebrows knitted heavily, and Jac thought that was simply because he found the question odd. But the shadows returned to his eyes then, dragged him away again to that place where he found it hard to picture anything clearly. ‘Though it’s strange you should ask that — because I’ve had this dream a few times where it’s someone else pulling the trigger on Jessica Roche, not me. I’m there just looking on.’
‘Oh? And do you get to see a face in those dreams? Do you see who it is?’
‘Nah.’ Larry shrugged, smiling hesitantly. ‘You know what it’s like with dreams: a tease. When I first had it, it was all tied-in with my mother staring at me in the courtroom. Man, I could feel her eyes like they were boring a hole right through my shoulder. I could feel all her shame and disappointment at me in that stare. And, I thought: if I could just see his face, see that it wasn’t me — I could turn and shout that out to her in the courtroom: “It wasn’t me, Ma… it wasn’t me. I saw him. I saw him!”’ Larry’s last words echoed starkly in the bare concrete room, and again a faint shiver ran through Jac. Larry smiled tightly, the shadows, the lost hope, drifting away again from his eyes. ‘But, you know, it was just a damn fool dream. And, in any case, he never did turn my way in the dreams; always stayed just a hazy shadow turned away from me, pointing the gun.’ Larry gave a half-snort, half-snigger, as if, with that, tossing the image from his mind. ‘But maybe it was just my mind self-protecting, throwing up all this because part of me couldn’t accept that I’d done it.’ Another brief, derisive snort. ‘Though I was way away then from the likes of Truelle and any psychiatrist’s couch. That’s just me self-analysing.’